Back in January of 2005 I asked for Windows Explorer replacement recommendations. A number of people stopped by and shared a long list of recommendations, however none of them came close to being acceptable to me.

I was contacted back in June 2006 by Jim Kueneman, a delphi component developer who was interested in piecing together a number of his components to create a full-featured Windows Explorer replacement like the one I was requesting: UltraExplorer.

Jim has just released UltraExplorer version 1.0 and has finally given me the go-ahead to announce it here.

Among the features I wanted:

• Column view (like Mac OS X Finder)
• Favorites panel (not a menu)
• Drop Stack (like Path Finder)
• Tabbed interface (like Path Finder and rumored OS X Finder in Leopard)
• Integrated command line

UltraExplorer has them all.

It’s not going to be perfect for everyone and it’s the first public release, so view it accordingly. But if you’re stuck on a Windows machine you should really check it out.